Steamworld Build

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Steamworld Build across the three tested resolutions reveal a pronounced GPU-bound scaling pattern for this combination of an Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. At 1080p High settings, the combo produces an average of 98.9 FPS. Moving to 1440p High drops that figure to 63.9 FPS, a reduction of 35.4 FPS. The jump to 4K High is even more severe, yielding only 34.3 FPS — a further drop of 29.6 FPS from the 1440p result. This trajectory indicates that the rendering load at higher pixel counts is scaling aggressively with resolution, which is typical for a GPU-limited scenario in a city builder where draw calls and object counts can strain the rasterizer.

The Low settings data reinforces this interpretation. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 170.6 FPS, which is nearly double the High-settings result. At 1440p Low, it still manages 110.5 FPS, and at 4K Low it holds 59.6 FPS. The fact that even at 4K Low the frame rate remains above 60 FPS suggests that the RTX 2060 has sufficient headroom when the pixel shader workload is reduced, but the settings presets have a multiplicative effect on the GPU's fill-rate demands. The gap between Low and High at 1080p is 71.7 FPS, whereas at 4K the same settings gap is only 25.3 FPS — indicating that at 4K, the GPU is so saturated that even reducing settings cannot fully recover the performance lost to resolution scaling.

Medium settings provide a middle ground: 132.5 FPS at 1080p, 82.4 FPS at 1440p, and 43.2 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, with 68.8 FPS at 1080p, 41.9 FPS at 1440p, and just 23.1 FPS at 4K. These numbers show a consistent pattern: each resolution doubling (from 1080p to 4K) approximately halves the frame rate across all settings, which is the signature of a GPU-bound workload where the CPU is not the primary limiter. The i5-9400's six cores and six threads are sufficient to feed the RTX 2060 at these frame rates, as the percent difference between resolutions is far larger than any CPU bottleneck would produce. The 4K Ultra result of 23.1 FPS is notably below the playable threshold, while 4K High at 34.3 FPS is still marginal, suggesting that users targeting 4K would need to use Low or Medium settings to maintain smooth gameplay.

How This Combo Ranks

In the global ranking for Steamworld Build, this combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 places at position 1403 out of 1730 tested combos. This puts it in the lower third of all configurations analyzed, which is consistent with the hardware's mid-range positioning from its respective release eras. The RTX 2060's percentile rank among all GPUs is 58, meaning it outperforms 58% of the graphics cards in the database, but the i5-9400's percentile rank is 50, placing it exactly at the median of all CPUs. When combined, these two components produce a system that is competent for 1080p gaming but struggles at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the measured FPS data.

The combo's rank of 1403 out of 1730 suggests that a significant portion of tested systems outperform it, largely due to more modern GPU architectures with higher memory bandwidth and more shading units. However, the ranking also indicates that a substantial number of combos (327) fall below this pair, which means it is far from the bottom of the performance spectrum. The nearest CPU rivals for the i5-9400 — the Intel Core i3-10305 (deltaPct 0.2%), Intel Core i3-1125G4 (deltaPct 0.2%), and Intel Xeon E-2134 (deltaPct 0.4%) — all have nearly identical average benchmark scores, within a fraction of a percent. This tells us that the CPU's contribution to the combo's ranking is not uniquely strong or weak; it is firmly in the mainstream performance tier. The nearest GPU rival, the AMD Radeon RX 7600S, is only 0.5% ahead in average score, while the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 and Pro 5600M are 1.7% behind. These small deltas indicate that the RTX 2060 sits in a tightly contested performance band where minor architectural differences can shift rankings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 is built on the TU106 chip using a 12 nm process, with a transistor count of 10,800 million and a die size of 445 mm². Its base clock is 1365 MHz with a boost clock of 1680 MHz, and it features 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units. For Steamworld Build, a city builder that typically involves dense on-screen geometry and large texture sets, the GPU's memory configuration is particularly relevant: 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus delivers 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This bandwidth is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gameplay, but the 4K Ultra result of 23.1 FPS suggests that the combination of pixel fill rate and memory bandwidth becomes a limiting factor at that resolution.

The GPU's texture rate of 201.6 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 80.64 GPixel/s provide context for the measured results. At 4K, the pixel rate translates to roughly 34.3 FPS at High settings, which aligns with the pixel throughput being the bottleneck. The FP32 performance of 6.451 TFLOPS is modest by modern standards, and the 30 RT cores and 240 tensor cores are present but not heavily utilized in a non-ray-traced city builder. The GPU's PassMark G3D score of 14111 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1242 reflect its overall compute capability. The 160 W TDP with a suggested 450 W PSU indicates this is a power-efficient design for its era, but the data shows that Steamworld Build at 4K Ultra demands more than this GPU can deliver, with the average FPS falling below 24. The 58th percentile ranking among all GPUs confirms that while the RTX 2060 is not a low-end part, it is outclassed by newer generations with higher memory capacities and faster architectures.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate for this combo at 1080p High settings?

A: The Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 produce an average of 98.9 FPS at 1920x1080 with High settings in Steamworld Build.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the average frame rates are 59.6 FPS on Low, 43.2 FPS on Medium, 34.3 FPS on High, and 23.1 FPS on Ultra settings. Only the Low preset approaches a smooth experience at 4K.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The data indicates a GPU-bound workload. The frame rate drops by roughly half when going from 1080p to 4K across all settings, which is characteristic of the RTX 2060 being the primary constraint rather than the i5-9400's six cores.

Q: What is the combo's ranking among all tested systems?

A: This combination ranks 1403rd out of 1730 tested combos for Steamworld Build, placing it in the lower third of the database.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 compare to its closest GPU rival?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7600S has an average score 0.5% higher than the RTX 2060, while the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 and Pro 5600M are both 1.7% lower in average score.

Q: What memory configuration does the RTX 2060 use?

A: It has 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is adequate for 1080p and 1440p but contributes to the low 4K Ultra performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a six-core, six-thread processor from the Coffee Lake Refresh generation, built on Intel's 14 nm process. Its base clock is 2.90 GHz with a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, and it has a 65 W TDP. The cache hierarchy consists of 64 KB L1 per core, 256 KB L2 per core, and 9 MB of shared L3 cache. For Steamworld Build, a city builder that can involve complex simulation logic and many entities, the CPU's single-threaded performance is often more critical than multi-threaded throughput. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1125 and multi-core score of 7969 suggest that the i5-9400 has adequate per-core performance for this genre. The lack of Hyper-Threading means only six threads are available, which could become a limitation in heavily populated cities, but the measured FPS data does not show signs of a CPU bottleneck at the tested settings.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s via dual-channel DDR4 is modest, but for a game that primarily stresses the GPU, this is unlikely to be the limiting factor. The i5-9400's percentile rank of 50 among all CPUs means it sits exactly at the median, and its average benchmark score of 2305 places it within 0.4% of its nearest rivals: the Core i3-10305 and Core i3-1125G4 (both 0.2% higher), and the Xeon E-2134 (0.4% higher). The Core i7-8809G is 0.6% higher in score. These small deltas indicate that the i5-9400's performance is well within the mainstream range, and swapping to any of these rival CPUs would yield negligible differences in Steamworld Build's frame rates. The 4.10 GHz boost clock provides sufficient single-thread speed for game logic, while the six cores handle background tasks without dragging down the average FPS. Overall, the CPU's role in this combo is to feed the RTX 2060 adequately at 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the GPU's workload becomes so heavy that the CPU's contribution to frame pacing is minimal.